GENEVA (IDN) - While existing tensions in Northeast Asia continue to be a source of concern and urgent action is required to diffuse these and bring about meaningful cooperation, a nuclear-weapon free zone (NWFZ) in the region is possible and should in fact be a priority, according to an international conference held in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, on November 26. [P] ARABIC | JAPANESE TEXT VERSIONPDF

In this column, Risto Isomäki, Finnish environmental activist and award-winning writer whose novels have been translated into several languages, describes the practically unimaginable capacity for destruction inherent in the nuclear facilities that currently exist around the world and argues that we have to try the impossible – force nuclear technologies back into the Pandora’s box from which they came.

HELSINKI (IPS) - At the height of the Cold War the world’s total arsenal of nuclear weapons, counted as explosive potential, may have amounted to three million Hiroshima bombs. The United States alone possessed 1.6 million Hiroshimas’ worth of destructive capacity.

TOKYO (IPS | IDN) - As we approach the 70th anniversary next year of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there are growing calls to place the humanitarian consequences of their use at the heart of deliberations about nuclear weapons.

KANDY, Sri Lanka (IDN) - In 2015 it will be 70 years since the horrible bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the USA – the only time nuclear weapons were ever used. The urgent need to seek solutions over nuclear weapons in North-east Asia was highlighted in the following paragraphs from the Asia Pacific Leaders Network’s (APLN) Jakarta Declaration of September 2014:

“Acutely conscious that the world’s more than 16,000 remaining nuclear weapons are strongly concentrated in the Asia Pacific region, with the US and Russia having over 90 per cent of the world’s stockpile and major strategic footprints here, China, India, and Pakistan all having significant arsenals, and the breakout state of North Korea continuing to build its capability, [P] JAPANESE TEXT VERSIONPDF

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last month singled out what he described as “one of the greatest ironies of modern science”: while humans are searching for life on other planets, the world’s nuclear powers are retaining and modernising their weapons to destroy life on planet earth.

UNITED NATIONS (IPS) - When the United Nations commemorated its first ever “international day for the total elimination of nuclear weapons,” the lingering question in the minds of most anti-nuclear activists was: are we anywhere closer to abolishing the deadly weapons or are we moving further and further away from their complete destruction? [P] GERMAN | JAPANESE TEXT VERSIONPDF

OSLO (IPS) - New military measures to deter what NATO perceives to be a direct threat from Russia were adopted at the alliance’s Heads of State meeting in Wales (Sep. 4-5). A few days earlier, President Barack Obama made promises in Estonia that the three tiny Baltic NATO member states would “never stand alone”

Since early 2014, Russia has done practically all that Western leaders have warned President Vladimir Putin in advance not to do. Crimea was occupied and annexed. Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine were encouraged and given practical support. Later, Russian personnel and equipment came more and more openly into conflict with Ukrainian forces. [P] JAPANESE TEXT VERSIONPDF